chopratejas--headroom/wiki/shared-context.md

SharedContext — Compressed Inter-Agent Context Sharing

When agents hand off to each other, context gets replayed in full. SharedContext compresses what moves between agents using Headroom's compression pipeline.

Quick Start

from headroom import SharedContext

ctx = SharedContext()

# Agent A stores large output
ctx.put("research", big_research_output, agent="researcher")

# Agent B gets compressed version (~80% smaller)
summary = ctx.get("research")

# Agent B needs full details
full = ctx.get("research", full=True)

API

put(key, content, *, agent=None)

Store content under a key. Compresses automatically using Headroom's full pipeline (SmartCrusher for JSON, CodeCompressor for code, Kompress for text).

entry = ctx.put("findings", big_json_output, agent="researcher")

entry.original_tokens     # 20,000
entry.compressed_tokens   # 4,000
entry.savings_percent     # 80.0
entry.transforms          # ["router:json:0.20"]

get(key, *, full=False)

Retrieve content. Returns compressed version by default, original with full=True.

compressed = ctx.get("findings")           # 4K tokens
original = ctx.get("findings", full=True)  # 20K tokens
missing = ctx.get("nonexistent")           # None

get_entry(key)

Get the full ContextEntry with metadata.

entry = ctx.get_entry("findings")
entry.key                # "findings"
entry.agent              # "researcher"
entry.original_tokens    # 20000
entry.compressed_tokens  # 4000
entry.savings_percent    # 80.0
entry.timestamp          # 1710000000.0
entry.transforms         # ["router:json:0.20"]

keys()

List all non-expired keys.

stats()

Aggregated stats across all entries.

stats = ctx.stats()
stats.entries                  # 3
stats.total_original_tokens    # 60000
stats.total_compressed_tokens  # 12000
stats.total_tokens_saved       # 48000
stats.savings_percent          # 80.0

clear()

Remove all entries.

Configuration

ctx = SharedContext(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929",  # For token counting
    ttl=3600,                             # 1 hour (default)
    max_entries=100,                       # Evicts oldest when full
)

Framework Examples

CrewAI

from headroom import SharedContext

ctx = SharedContext()

# After researcher task
ctx.put("findings", researcher_task.output.raw)

# Coder task gets compressed context
coder_context = ctx.get("findings")

LangGraph

from headroom import SharedContext

ctx = SharedContext()

def researcher_node(state):
    result = do_research()
    ctx.put("research", result)
    return {"research_summary": ctx.get("research")}

def coder_node(state):
    # Compressed summary in state, full details on demand
    full = ctx.get("research", full=True)
    return {"code": write_code(full)}

OpenAI Agents SDK

from headroom import SharedContext

ctx = SharedContext()

def compress_handoff(messages):
    for msg in messages:
        if len(msg.content) > 1000:
            ctx.put(msg.id, msg.content)
            msg.content = ctx.get(msg.id)
    return messages

handoff(agent=coder, input_filter=compress_handoff)

Any Framework

SharedContext is framework-agnostic. It's just put() and get(). Use it wherever context moves between agents.

How It Works

Under the hood, put() calls headroom.compress() (the same pipeline used by the proxy) and stores the original in memory. get() returns the compressed version. get(full=True) returns the original.

• JSON arrays → SmartCrusher (70-95% compression)
• Code → CodeCompressor (AST-aware, with [code] extra)
• Text → Kompress (ModernBERT, with [ml] extra) or passthrough
• Entries expire after TTL (default 1 hour)
• Oldest entries evicted when max_entries reached